Robert Milligan, 24, who works at a Taco Bell on Camp Pendleton, says, "It is a good thing that we went over there and took care of it now before it got even worse."

OCEANSIDE – At the ABC Laundry & Surplus dry cleaners on Pier View Way, a poster shows President Bush talking on the phone to Saddam Hussein. "Can you hear me now?" Bush asks. In the background, an Iraqi building has been blown to bits.

Public expressions of wartime bravado are easy to find in this city on the border of Camp Pendleton, where Semper Fi bumper stickers are as common as yellow ribbons and U.S. flags. Yet the owner of ABC Laundry admits to mixed feelings about the invasion of Iraq.

Several neatly pressed Marine uniforms have been hanging unclaimed in her shop for as long as a year, Donna Tompkins said, and she doesn't have the courage to call the phone numbers on the tags to find out why.

"To me, it's just sad," said Tompkins, 56. "I was here when Vietnam was going on. It's just . . . I don't know. The whole thing is sad."

With no end in sight to America's military commitment in Iraq, residents of Oceanside – a city of 172,000 whose identity is interwoven with the base – appear deeply divided about whether the war was a good idea, a series of recent interviews shows. Yet they share a growing sense of melancholy as the Camp Pendleton body count continues to climb.

At Spanky's Pizza on Coast Highway, where the walls are decorated with more than 100 photos of fresh-faced Marines playing pool or eating pizza, the owner tried one afternoon to estimate how many of those young people have been killed in the past year. Probably 10 or more, she guessed.

At Bub's Whiskey Dive on Pier View Way, the death toll is rumored to include two Marines who used to perform in a rock band at the popular bar. The manager didn't know the full names of the two men, but she believes the rumor is true.

At Dorothy's Military Shop on Tremont Street, where Marines headed for Iraq buy high-tech combat gear, Deby Alexander finds the fatality reports especially sobering in light of the ages of her customers. Some come into her store with their mothers, who want to make sure their children are well-equipped for battle.

"Kids come in here, they're 18, 19 years old – the same age as my son – and they're buying knives and guns," said Alexander, whose husband's family owns the store.

Of the 138,000 U.S. troops fighting in Iraq, at least 15,000 are based at Camp Pendleton. If Camp Pendleton Marines are doing a large share of the fighting, they are also doing a large share of the dying. Of the 849 American military personnel killed in Iraq as of yesterday, at least 96 were Camp Pendleton troops.

Recent interviews with 30 people in downtown Oceanside – store owners, military spouses, city residents whose friends and neighbors are Marines – found an even split between those who support Bush's decision to wage war in Iraq and those who oppose it or have distinct reservations.

Those who back the decision say Hussein was a dangerous thug who probably destroyed or hid his alleged weapons of mass destruction. Some remain convinced that he supported anti-American terrorists, despite the 9/11 commission's inability to prove any link between the deposed dictator and the Sept. 11, 2001, al-Qaeda plot.

As for the rising death toll, these people said, it is a terrible but unavoidable price for making the world a safer place.

"Every time I see that someone has died, I look to see the name to see if it was somebody I knew," said Jacquie Pitre, a real estate agent who has lived in Oceanside for 15 years. "But at the same time, I think it's necessary."

The war's opponents worry about the rising death toll, about U.S. forces winding up in a quagmire, about the failure to find weapons of mass destruction.

"It's scary, you know," said Amy Fowler, 29, whose Marine husband spent nine months in Kuwait last year. "I think innocent guys are dying and for not such a great cause."

A quiet downtown

With so many Marines overseas, downtown Oceanside is mostly quiet these days. Business is down as much as 50 percent at some of the stores that line Coast Highway between Oceanside Boulevard and Neptune Way.

The stores tend to cater to the Marines' various needs and whims. Within a few blocks' walk of City Hall are four military supply stores, several bars, three check-cashing businesses, a head shop, an adult bookstore and seven barbershops that offer military-style buzz cuts.

A T-shirt for sale in one store window salutes Operation Iraqi Freedom and reads, "First Marine Division. Firmly Planting Another Bootprint in History."

G.I. Joe's Army-Navy Surplus on Pier View Way sells uniforms, canteens, boots and other military accessories. The cashier on Monday morning was 79-year-old Jack Jost, a retired advertising executive and former Marine.

Asked whether any of the store's customers have been killed in Iraq, Jost said, "Probably." But he noted that the casualty rate for U.S. troops in Iraq is low compared with other wars, and his support for the invasion hasn't wavered.

"You've got to start somewhere if you're going to clean up the world," he said.

Teresa Frias also believes that Bush made the right decision. A 33-year-old bartender, she has a sister in the Navy and her 10-year-old daughter has a best friend whose mother is a Marine deployed in Iraq.

She doesn't know if Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction but says "it's better to be safe than sorry." She also thinks that Iraq will become more stable over time and much better off than it was with Hussein in charge.

"You can't do it overnight," she said. "And it's only been, what, two years?"

But for Stud Cuts barber Kendra Doherty, the situation in Iraq is starting to look like a foreign-policy disaster. Talking to a reporter while cutting a man's hair with an electric shaver, Doherty, 32, said she supported the war at first but is "having second thoughts, definitely."

"It just seems like a lot of people are dying every day, and it doesn't seem like it's getting better," she said. "I just want it to be over, you know, and I don't see any end anytime soon."

Rebecca Meadows called the situation "scary." Her husband is a Camp Pendleton Marine who has yet to be deployed overseas. On this particular day, Meadows, 22, was shopping with her 10-month-old son, Bryan.

"Right now, I don't think they're going great," she said when asked how she thought things were going in Iraq. "They could go a lot better."

Her outlook has become more negative as the list of casualties has grown. Those casualties include people she knows. Her friend's husband's finger was blown off by shrapnel from an Iraqi land mine.

Asked whether she thought Bush made a mistake by invading Iraq, Meadows paused and thought for a moment.

"Honestly, yeah," she said. "I'm from Texas, so I'm not supposed to say that."

The opinions in this beach town don't necessarily divide along traditional liberal and conservative lines.

A real-estate agent named Tammi Durrance, a self-described devout Christian, expressed outrage at the invasion. "We say that we are a Christian nation, but we're not conducting ourselves in a godly manner."

By contrast, the owner of Inner World – a Coast Highway head shop that sells bongs, pipes and T-shirts inscribed with slogans such as "Rehab is for quitters" – proudly displayed his Saddam Hussein dartboard and praised Bush for "getting rid of the bad guys."

"They're all terrorists," said the owner, Frank Korn, 54, when asked if he thinks Hussein played a role in the 9/11 attacks. "They all know each other. They all have dinner together."

United in their concern

Although the invasion has its fierce supporters and adamant opponents in downtown Oceanside, the opinions become more nuanced when talk turns to what should happen next.

Some supporters agree with opponents that the troops should be pulled out as soon as possible. Others – supporters and opponents alike – think the United States has an obligation to stay in Iraq until the country is stable. Opinions also differ about Iraq's long-term future and about long-term U.S. goals in the region.

Even if residents of Oceanside don't agree on whether the invasion was right or wrong, they are united in their concern for the young people who used to clog the barbershops, movie theaters and surf shops and now are dodging mortar rounds while searching for Iraqi insurgents.

A visitor can walk into Spanky's Pizza and find tributes to the Marines all over the walls. "Deployed husbands, USMC, Wives Waiting Patiently" is written in magic marker on a pizza box. A note on a T-shirt offers kudos to "the grunts of 0311." "Popin slugs wit a thrill," it says. Almost lost in the clutter is a pizza-box memorial for Marine Lance Cpl. Aric Barr, 22, of Allegheny, Pa., who was killed in Iraq in April.

At Bub's Whiskey Dive, bartender Amber Ross, 24, said Marines tend to drop by just before they head overseas. Some brim with energy and bring-it-on attitude. Others, she said, confide that "they don't agree with what they're doing, but it's their job."

One Marine wrote a letter to the bar from Kuwait. "There is sand as far as the eye can see," he reported. "No beer, no girls to look at."

Another Marine came in on the eve of his deployment and wrote a note to Ross on a napkin, confiding that he was in love with her. She gave him a peck on the cheek before he left.

"I felt like he was just trying to hold on to anything he could at the last minute," she said. "It was sad."